Pope Francis Would Be a Great Physician

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Pope FrancisThe New Yorker recently published a very nice article on Pope Francis. At one point in the article, the Pope explains why he is trying to deemphasize all the controversies that have taken up so much of the Church’s attention in recent years, controversies about birth control, abortion and the like. His explanation shows a respectable understanding of medical care:

The thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds.

There are many physicians I have worked with who don’t have such a keen sense of how to set priorities in healthcare. So if things don’t work out for him as Pope, maybe he has a second career waiting for him!
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Name That President

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mystery manRead the following quote, and try to guess which U.S. president made this statement:

“A responsible budget is not our only weapon to control inflation.  We must act now to protect all Americans from healthcare costs that are rising $1 million per hour, 24 hours a day, doubling every 5 years.  We must take control of the largest contributor to that inflation – skyrocketing hospital costs.”

Would you be surprised to learn that those words came out of the mouth of…Jimmy Carter?  It might be hard to remember, but Carter was essentially a fiscally conservative Democrat.  Probably more fiscally conservative than Ronald Reagan was during his presidency.  But in any case, Carter’s entire vision of healthcare reform was to control healthcare costs.  Not a vision easy to get many people excited about, as Paul Ryan has no doubtedly discovered more recently.  That might explain why Jimmy Carter got nowhere in reforming the U.S. healthcare system.
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Stopping Unhealthy Eating with a Traffic Light

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In a recently published article, a team of researchers showed that a simple graphical cue, showing people which foods are healthy and unhealthy, significantly improve their eating behaviors. Here is a nice summary of the study results, as summarized on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website:

food stoplight

With a problem as large as America’s obesity epidemic, it might come down to changing behavior one stoplight at a time.
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Who Hated Domestic Policy More: John Kennedy or Richard Nixon?

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jfk v nixonIn an earlier post, I wrote about JFK’s disdain for domestic politics, and how such disdain doomed his lackluster efforts to pass Medicare legislation.  As it turns out, Richard Nixon, the man he defeated in the 1962 Presidential Election, held similar disdain for domestic  affairs when he was President of the United States, and not coincidentally also failed in his attempt to reform the U.S. healthcare system.  His disdain is tersely captured in a note he sent to his domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman, while in the White House:

“I want you to concentrate on selling domestic programs and answering attacks on them, rather than developing those programs…Substance in the case of foreign policy is infinitely more important substance is in the case of domestic policy.”

In politics, you can’t get what you don’t fight for.
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Another Early Obamacare Supporter: Richard Nixon?!

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nixonIn a previous post, I presented a quote from Dwight Eisenhower that foreshadows the Obamacare insurance exchanges, and argued that Obamacare is a centrist healthcare law, one that rather than socialize the healthcare system instead promotes private hospitals and private insurance companies.  I even wondered whether Eisenhower might support important components of the Affordable Care Act.
As it turns out, Eisenhower’s Vice President, Richard Nixon, also supported many reforms that later became parts of Obamacare.  While president, Richard Nixon put forward a Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan (or CHIP).  In CHIP, Nixon laid out a range of interventions, including… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)

Health and Happiness: A Global Perspective

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As a physician and behavioral scientist, I am always interested to explore the connection between psychological well-being and health. Which is why I have decided to share recent findings from a study, published in Psychological Science, that presents data from across the globe on positive emotions and self-reported health.

 global health and emotion

The data show a pretty strong relationship between health and positive emotion. I am inclined to believe that this relationship is real. But keep in mind one problem with these kind of data – self-reported health may be influenced by the same personality traits that also influence how people report on their own emotions. In either case, the data do not look good for Eastern Europe!
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Why JFK Failed to Pass Medicare

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jfkIn a late night phone call during a foreign policy crisis, Kennedy expressed disdain for domestic policy, showing the kind of attitude that doomed later efforts to reform the U.S. healthcare system:

“It really is true that foreign affairs is the only important issue for a president to handle, isn’t it?  I mean, who gives a shit if the minimum wage is $1.15 or $1.25 in comparison to something like this?”

Need I say more?
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PeterUbel